Frans Timmermans’ big climate challenge – POLITICO
Frans Timmermans holds the future of the next European Commission in his hands.
The Dutch Socialist — appointed Tuesday as the Commission's executive vice president in charge of the European Green Deal — is overseeing Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen's signature policy.
“I want the European Green Deal to become Europe's hallmark. At the heart of it is our commitment to becoming the world’s first climate-neutral Continent,” von der Leyen said.
His brief is vast, ranging from climate policy to the environment, green finance, water, nature, taxes, transport and more.
As climate chief, Timmermans will have to strike a balance between calls for faster climate action and worry among some EU countries and traditional industries that such steps might be very costly and gut the Continent's competitiveness.
Here are four things to know about Timmermans and the task he faces over the next five years.
1. Timmermans is one of the most powerful officials in Brussels
The new setup gives Timmermans much more power over climate policy than the arrangement of the current Commission, where Climate and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete jostled with Energy Union Vice President Maroš Šefčovič.
As well as executive vice president, Timmermans is also climate commissioner, giving him direct control of bureaucrats and the ability to steer and set policy, rather than just coordinating the efforts of commissioners without direct involvement, as Šefčovič had to do.
He’ll also chair the Commission's College in von der Leyen's absence.
Kadri Simson, the nominee to be energy commissioner, was told in her mission letter: “As a rule, you will work under the guidance of the Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal. The Directorate-General for Energy will support you in your work.”
“I don’t always get the easiest jobs" — Frans Timmermans
Giving executive vice presidents their own policy departments gives them “the muscle to deal with the vast subjects they have to deal with,” von der Leyen said Tuesday.
Because the impact of climate change is huge and growing, so is Timmermans' brief; he'll work with commissioners in charge of transport, energy, health, agriculture, environment and oceans and cohesion and reforms.
Danish Executive Vice President and Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager will also dip into energy.
Revamping the system will depend on "how powerful, and how convincing" the new vice presidents are in disrupting the "cottage industries" of existing portfolios, a senior official said ahead of Tuesday's announcement.
2. He faces big challenges on climate policy
Implementing von der Leyen’s climate effort will mean revamping the way the bloc uses and produces energy, unlocking private investment and supporting new clean technologies.
Von der Leyen promised to present the European Green Deal within the first 100 days of her mandate. That includes boosting the bloc’s emissions reduction targets from the current 40 percent to as much as 55 percent by 2030, and proposing a climate law to enshrine a goal of climate neutrality by 2050. Officials have said that might be difficult.
Timmermans will also be in charge of coordinating efforts for a new “just transition” fund, aimed at helping regions weather the shift away from fossil fuels. He'll coordinate efforts to cut pollution, “looking at air, water, and noise pollution from transport, agriculture and food production, water quality, hazardous chemicals and other key areas,” reduce the carbon footprint of transport and promote a circular economy.
He’ll also steer work on some of von der Leyen’s most controversial proposals, to “ensure that our tax policies enable us to deliver on our climate ambitions." That includes working on a carbon border tax as well as reviewing the Energy Taxation Directive. That means he will have to coordinate with Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni and Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan.
Frans Timmermans | Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images
He’s also meant to ensure countries implement existing climate legislation, including the bloc’s carbon market reform, and national emissions reduction goals in sectors such as transport, buildings and agriculture.
Environmental campaigners support Timmermans, for now.
“For both climate and the environment, the next five years will be crucial, so we welcome all efforts to deliver an ambitious Green Deal and a leading role for Frans Timmermans," said Jeremy Wates, secretary-general of the European Environmental Bureau.
But the climate policy file is politically dangerous — especially as climate campaigners won't be easily satisfied with the EU's slow policymaking machinery.
3. He also faces an eastern challenge
His highest profile responsibility in the outgoing Commission was taking Poland and Hungary to task over rule of law. Both countries have moved to put the courts and other institutions under the firm control of their ruling parties; Timmermans got the job of rolling back those changes and defending the EU’s democratic standards.
“I don’t always get the easiest jobs, let me put it that way,” he told POLITICO in an interview last year.
That made him a reviled figure in Warsaw and Budapest, where he was seen as the embodiment of a Brussels busybody telling elected governments what they could or couldn’t do. Those fights continue under the von der Leyen Commission but no longer under Timmermans’ direction.
However, his past job could come to haunt him in his new one. He needs both Central European countries on board to push through ambitious new climate targets and policies.
Poland and Hungary (along with the Czech Republic and Estonia) are the only EU countries holding out against an effort to sign up the bloc to the goal of becoming climate neutral by 2050. Central and Eastern European countries fear this would hamper economic growth, and want more support from Brussels — financial and otherwise — to phase out coal-fired power.
Frans Timmermans | Frederick Florin/AFP via Getty Images
When Timmermans next shows up in Warsaw and Budapest it won’t be as the man chastising them for democratic backsliding, but as someone who both needs their climate cooperation and can offer access to crucial programs to soften the economic blow of going green.
There, some anecdotes from his past from a family of Dutch coal miners who saw their own industry die out might buy him some credibility in Katowice or Ostrava.
4. Timmermans, the Dutch politician
Timmermans is a good retail politician. He charms crowds — in Warsaw, the liberal opponents of the ruling Law and Justice party swooned when he made a whistle-stop tour as part of his failed candidacy to be the next European Commission president. He often tells the story of how his home town was liberated by Polish soldiers during the war.
But in person he can be blunt.
That makes him quite different from Arias Cañete. The jovial and rotund Spaniard's diplomatic skills relied as much on his stamina in negotiations as his likability to get around political resistance, playing that to his advantage in pushing legislation through in Brussels and in leading the EU effort in international climate talks.
That's not to say Timmermans lacks heft. He's a savvy and experienced politician who speaks seven languages, and was foreign minister of the Netherlands before moving to the Commission in 2014. He helped the EU strike a deal with Turkey on migration and led the fight to cut down on plastics use.
He’s just not particularly cuddly.